Understanding the mental health journeys of Canadian women on probation and parole: psychological service use experiences in the criminal legal system
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The number of justice-involved women in Canada is rising, yet little is known about the mental health journeys of women on probation and parole. Using a qualitative research design, we explored this population’s psychological service use experiences. Our two research objectives were 1) to understand the types of mental health services accessed, factors shaping service use, service content and modality preferences, and coping strategies among women on probation and parole, and 2) to explore the impacts of criminal legal involvement on participants’ mental health and decisions to (not) access psychological support. We sought to understand how intersecting identities, particularly gender and parenting status, shaped women’s experiences. Method: Women on probation and parole in Canada were asked to complete a 30-minute online survey in Qualtrics, which included questions about their demographics and psychological service use. In total, nine women completed the survey. Quantitative data concerning service use were analyzed descriptively, while responses to open-ended questions were analyzed by two researchers using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Results: All participants reported accessing mental health services in the past year, with the most common supports being therapists, psychologists, family doctors, and Indigenous Elders or Knowledge Keepers. Although many participants were mandated to receive treatment as part of their sentence or by Child and Family Services, nearly half of our participants believed that seeking psychological support would be helpful. We developed three main themes from the qualitative analysis: Complex impacts of criminal legal involvement on well-being (subthemes: “Back on track,” “Availability and wait lists,” “Just surviving,” and “I do not like having my name in the system”), Forming help-seeking intentions (subthemes: “Face the problems,” “It is not really my decision,” “Finding the right person,” and “I want to get my life back”), and Caring for my well-being (subthemes: Self-care, “Keeping busy with programs”). Discussion & Implications: Findings may guide correctional officers in collaboratively developing treatment plans that meet their clients’ needs and preferences. Women in our sample described long wait times and limited transportation as impeding service use, which suggests a need for greater and more accessible psychological services within the community and during incarceration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.030 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".